


welcome to the human race

by smilebackwards



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Daemon Separation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 23:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11588250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: Once Peter made it through the seizures and shudders and shakes, his first thought was that he’d been abducted by witches. Dozens of different faces—blue and red and ridged—hovered over him, forcing tasteless food down his throat, and there wasn’t one daemon in sight.





	welcome to the human race

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Less Than Zero](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896687) by [Tyranno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyranno/pseuds/Tyranno). 



> Many thanks to Tyranno for letting me play with their 'verse! Title is from Mr. Blue Sky by ELO.

Once Peter made it through the seizures and shudders and shakes, his first thought was that he’d been abducted by witches. Dozens of different faces—blue and red and ridged—hovered over him, forcing tasteless food down his throat, and there wasn’t one daemon in sight. 

Witches were all female on Earth, but Peter figured space might have different rules.

It did. But the rule wasn’t gender or distance. Peter met ten new species in the span of a week and not one of them had daemons. 

“What’re you lookin’ for, boy?” Yondu asked, the first time he let Peter off the ship. 

It was a trade planet and Peter craned his neck looking not at the hovercars or the black hole in the sky that everyone was ignoring but at the _people._ Normal people. A little more pink and green than Peter was used to seeing, but civilians, not space pirates. They ought to follow the rules. 

There was a boy, a little older than Peter, being followed by what looked like a six-legged puppy, and Peter’s heart caught in his throat until he looked close and realized it was just a regular animal. “Where are the daemons?” 

“Demons?” Yondu laughed. “Axia here may not be precisely reputable, but this ain’t Hell, Pete.”

“The _daemons_ ,” Peter repeated, irritated at being misunderstood—the supposed universal translator stuck in his neck was _crap_ sometimes—but Yondu was already walking away. Peter jogged to catch up to him as he ducked into a bar.

They made their way straight over to a table in the corner, littered with mugs and pockmarked with laser burns, and surrounded by four disreputable looking men.

“Gentlemen,” Yondu said, ironically, his smile curved like a blade. “Heard you might have some work needs doing.”

The leader wore a predatory grin and a scar across his face. He seemed like the kind of man to have a jackal daemon or maybe a Rottweiler. Peter looked under the table, but it was just empty. Everybody was empty.

-

Peter felt the scooped-out hole in his chest every day, right at his sternum, where Easter used to rest when they’d lie out in the cornfield staring up at the cloudless blue of the sky, rising and falling with the rhythm of Peter’s breath.

He’d heard of intercision. Seen it in _The Cut_ and on the late-night news he wasn’t supposed to watch. People that’d had it done to them were usually shown clutching some kind of object stand-in. A ceramic cup or a stuffed toy. 

Peter’s fingers clenched around his Walkman. He’d never felt the need to hold it so tightly until Easter wasn’t there to sing with him anymore. 

Peter learned to live with it. There wasn’t much choice. Besides, the galaxy wasn’t all bad. 

“Pete!” Kraglin yelled, tossing Peter a square case nicked from Xandar’s much vaunted molecular fusion lab.

Peter caught it with his left hand, clipped his Walkman to his belt with his right, and ran like hell. Law enforcement was less inclined to shoot at a kid in sneakers and a Blue Hornbacks t-shirt Yondu had bought Peter from a Chi-ball game than at a thief in red Ravager leather but there were no guarantees.

A quarter mile and two destroyed speeders later, Peter’s sneakers clattered up the ramp of the _Eclector._ “Special delivery,” he said cheekily, handing the case off to Yondu.

Yondu smiled and ruffled Peter’s hair, none too gently. “Good work, boy. Knew we hadn’t eaten you yet for a reason.”

Peter rolled his eyes. Yondu usually put up a hard front in view of the crew but Peter always got three square Terran-palatable meals a day, modified power packs for his Walkman, and whatever odds and ends might catch Yondu’s eye when he was planetside.

Yondu had been on M’Hass scouting a job while Kraglin led the snatch and grab and Peter fully expected a present hidden under his pillow. 

Sure enough, when Peter got back to his bunk, there was a pair of rocket boots. Nice ones like Horuz had with a dual magnetic function in case of gravity loss. Peter grinned. _Score._

-

When Peter was fifteen, he ran his first solo job. It came off without a hitch and Yondu gave Peter an official Ravager coat and a slot in the crew. Full shares on any jobs and the M-ship Peter’d named the _Milano_ years ago and maintained and upgraded since he was ten. 

Peter touched flame emblem on his shoulder and felt something in him settle. He put a hand over his chest to cover the old phantom ache and Peter knew, back on Earth, Easter had made her choice.

-

It took Peter twenty six years to get home. Earth was an embargoed planet and now that Asgard had taken a more active interest, the no-fly barrier was no longer pockmarked with holes like the one Yondu slipped through all those years ago.

Still, Asgard tech was no match for Rocket’s ability to steal shit, and Peter had gotten out of worse places, let alone in.

Peter touched the _Milano_ down in the cornfield, mainly for the drama of it. A genuine alien crop circle. 

He could feel the brutally snapped bond with Easter surging up with new life. Peter hadn’t even gotten the ramp halfway down before he was hit right at the neck with over-excited cat daemon. “Peter, Peter, Peter. You’re home,” Easter whispered into his skin as Peter clutched her tight.

Gamora had a knife in her hands in a split second. 

“Please don’t stab my soul,” Peter said. “Guys, this is Easter.”

“Hello,” Gamora said, cautious.

Drax tipped his head curiously. “Greetings, small animal.”

Easter took up a perch on Peter’s shoulder, rubbing against his cheek, and looked them over. “You’re Peter’s friends?”

“Whoa,” Rocket said. Peter maybe should have broken some of the details about daemons to him beforehand.

“And this is Groot,” Peter said, picking up Groot’s pot.

“I am Groot,” Groot agreed.

Easter put a paw tentatively against the pot. “We could get him better soil. Grandad just had the southwest field tilled.”

Peter swallowed. “Is Grandad—”

“Peter?” Strong arms came up around Peter. “You’ve gotten big,” his grandad said, smiling through his tears. 

-

Easter didn’t leave Peter’s shoulder for days after they were reunited. She left claw marks in the leather of his coat. Peter didn’t mind. He kept running his fingers over the softness of her fur, disbelieving. 

Peter wondered if Easter would have settled differently if she’d been with him out in the wide galaxy. If she might have tried on a space rat or Krylorian dragon for size. 

He was lucky that she settled as something small. His mom’d had a horse daemon. No way Kandor would have fit in the _Milano._ Peter remembered the dappled grey of Kandor’s coat, how he’d stood at the open window at the hospital, head poking through to rest on the starched sheets, and disappeared like smoke to the tune of the heart monitor flatlining.

Peter’s grandad hosted a ‘Peter’s Not Dead!’ party at the farm and all Peter’s aunts and uncles and cousins showed up to stare at him and crush him with hugs. 

Peter’s cousin Ella’s daemon settled as an arctic fox. It wasn’t quite a raccoon but it was close enough to make Rocket gape even more than Easter.

“Hey,” Rocket said, putting down the Pabst Blue Ribbon that he’d been systematically depleting from the beer fridge.

“Yeah?” Merlyn replied, as laconic as Ella was loquacious. 

Rocket made a futile circular gesture with his hands. “You’re a —”

“I’m a what?” Merlyn asked.

“A daemon,” Rocket said. “A soul. Nobody made you?”

Merlyn tilted his head. “Well, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much…”

Rocket threw up his hands and turned to Peter. “I can’t believe I’m _not_ related to this asshole.”

Peter patted Rocket on the shoulder in solidarity. “I’m related to him if that helps,” he said, handing Rocket a hotdog and another beer. 

-

Before he left, Peter’s grandad made him promise to come home for Christmas and had him call a helpline for some jerkoffs called the Avengers who were apparently the Guardians of Earth. Their agency made Peter sign a bunch of waivers and gave him a transponder that would let the _Milano_ through the Asgard no-fly barriers without the need for a super illegal cloaking device and fancy flying.

“Take all the fun out of it why don’t they,” Rocket complained, as they left Earth’s atmosphere.

“We could still do some smuggling,” Peter offered, watching Earth turn to a blue marble in the viewscreen. “Bet the panserbjørne would love the sky-iron harvested in Knowhere.” Rocket would probably get along famously with the armoured bears of Svalbard.

Peter felt a shudder run through him and turned around to see Drax with a hand on Easter’s back. Easter’s eyes were wide and shocked.

“Jesus,” Peter yelped, scooping Easter up safely to his chest. “Excuse you! Do I go around putting my hands all over your soul?”

Drax looked at him. “Rocket allows me to pat him.”

“Hey,” Rocket said, testily, “that was special circumstance only.”

“And anyway, Easter ain’t Rocket,” Peter said, holding Easter up alongside Rocket to illustrate the difference. “You don’t touch Terrans’ daemons. Like how you don’t touch Gamora’s knives.”

Gamora put a hand over her knives protectively.

“I see,” Drax said, nodding.

“All right, then,” Peter said. He set Easter down in the copilot’s seat next to Groot so he could queue up the HUD to check if they’d gotten any messages while in Earth’s dead comm zone.

Yondu’s face popped up on the viewscreen. “Quill, need you for a job. Meet me at the usual spot on Cytaa.” 

“Slight detour,” Peter called over his shoulder. He maybe still owed Yondu a little for the bait and switch with the troll doll and the mutiny that had resulted. Although Peter had always said that Taserface was an asshole, and now Yondu was rid of him and a few other bad eggs, so in the end Peter maintained that he’d done Yondu a solid.

“I like Cytaa,” Drax said. “They race liatros against one another. It is hilarious.” 

“Great,” Peter said. “Let’s go.”

-

The usual spot on Cytaa was the first bar adjacent to the spaceport. A dive that had been renamed at least three times since Peter’s first visit but with no appreciable difference in food, decor or clientele. 

Yondu was waiting at the table in the back with the best view of the door. “Quill,” he said expansively, standing and clapping Peter on the back. “Been waitin’ on you, boy.”

Easter’s claws pinched into Peter’s shoulder. 

“You get yourself a ketzel?” Yondu asked, looking at Easter. “I remember you beggin’ me for a critter when you were a youngin’.” He reached out a hand.

Peter could see already that he was going to get tired of telling people not to touch Easter. Earth taboo didn’t mean much in space where folks didn’t have a frame of reference. “Careful,” Peter tried instead. “Terran cat venom can can paralyze a grown man in ten seconds and kill one in twenty.”

Yondu drew back his hand.

Peter could feel Easter trembling with rage. But she didn’t understand yet. Twenty six years, fifty three planets, and Peter never found anyone like them. Terrans really were alone in not being alone. And for all the times he’d yelled shit like ‘you ain’t my keeper’ and ‘fine, fucking eat me!’ during his teens, Yondu was the closest thing he had to a father and Peter had never told him— 

“You took him from me!” Easter hissed, fur standing straight up on her back like she’d been electrified.

“Hell now,” Yondu said. “You picked up another one of them talking rats?”

Easter lunged.

Peter grabbed her before she could get Yondu in the jugular or take out an eye. Though Yondu could probably have pulled off an eye patch as part of his space pirate aesthetic. “Easter’s my daemon,” Peter said.

“I’m his soul, you bastard,” Easter added coldly. “You ripped us apart. That’s a crime punishable by death on Earth.”

Yondu looked about as shocked as Peter had ever seen him. “Pete, what’s—” His brow furrowed. “You used to ask about demons when you were a kid.”

“Daemons are a Terran thing,” Peter explained. He wished Easter had let him order a drink beforehand if they were going to get into this. “We’re two for the price of one. Easter’s a part of me.”

“And, I mean, yeah, Yondu abducted me, which was uncool,” Peter said to Easter, “but he didn’t sever us on purpose.” Yondu had plenty of mean streak, but he wasn’t cruel just for the sake of it.

Easter sniffed contemptuously. “Ignorance isn’t an excuse.”

“I’m sorry,” Yondu said. “You’re right.” He looked like he might put a hand on Peter’s unoccupied shoulder and then thought better of it. “There’s a lot of things I should’ve done different.”

Easter turned her luminous eyes on Yondu. That was another thing Peter hadn’t seen out in the universe yet. The disconcerting slitted pupil of a cat’s eye. “We don’t forgive you,” she said, perhaps closer to the truth than Peter usually let himself acknowledge.

“Fair enough,” Yondu said, nodding. “Forgiveness ought’a be earned. How’s about we start with a score worth half a million units?”

Easter’s ears pricked up with interest. “That’s a lot, right?” she asked Peter.

“It’s a lot,” Peter confirmed. 

“All right,” Easter agreed. “But we get 70%.”

A smile cracked open Yondu’s face. “That’s my boy.”  



End file.
